Should I go for the i3 2120 or is their a better choice?

for that price, i would go with a:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
or even a
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
the last one really worths the price, and it is great for gaming, besides it is very easy to overclock it, so for the price i would say that 2500k is the best one;

using a i3 on some games, specific those that uses 4 CPUS, you will have a much lower performance in comparison with a i5.

Yes in your budget it's the best.

Cant go for those kind of prices mate, way to much. I need it to be around the $150 mark max

Looks like the stellar performance was on a cherry picked review. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-gaming-pc-ove...



Thats why you have to look at the games you are wanting to play not some review based on what games run stellar on the I3 2120. This months 650 build off really removed the wool over the I3 review as being a top cpu choice for games.

Faster video card + i3 = lower performance when its vs I5. You can see the video card doing the work on metro 2033 very high settings, but high starts to push the game back to the CPU.

Yes but i dont have a 6950, i have a 5770 which i assume would not be bottlencked

well some games like GTA IV are really CPU dependant and so you will be bottlenecked by the CPU, but like i said really it is on some specific games, if you could expand those 150$ a little would be very nice, otherwise, you can go with the i3 it is really my second option if there was no way of going with the 2500k.

Ideally i would love to go for the 2500k but im only 15 and my family really isnt well of at all, so this is really all the money i have going in to this

your best bet may be to check around and see what price you can get on a core 2 quad for that motherboard you have, unless its dead.

The problem with the mobo i have is that it does not allow for oc'ing plus core 2 quads are very expensive and also i want to go to 1155 so that i have future upgrade potential

yea you can go with the i3, it is a great solution for the money. since you can't really go over it is the best solution for you.

Some of those numbers were surprising. I wonder now if the i3 can even push the 6950 or could it have done just as well for $100 less and a 6870.

Thanks and thanks to every one else for the help

Fresh review of an I5-2120. They use a $240 AMD6950 video card but it should still give you an idea of a 2120 or 2100 performance. A 2120 is only $3 USD more.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-gaming-pc-ove...

@noob2222 already linked that.

For a budget processor the 2120 is probably the best choice for your budget. Yes there are limitations that a dual core, hyper-threaded processor will run into, as shown by the latest SBM.

Yh but with the rest of my system and what im going to be doing on it i doubt these problems will affect me to badly